Stubbing return arguments

Testing RSpec
1

I’m writting a code example for the following method:

def upload(email_address, product_data)
  errors = []
  user = resolve_user_from(email_address)
  product_file_name = ProductFileHandler.persist(user,

product_data, errors)
if errors.blank?
# … do some stuff
else
# … do some other stuff
end
end

ProductFileHandler.persist will add any errors it encounters to the
errors array I pass in. In my test of upload, I want to stub that
error array with different values. After much googling and RSpec doc
searching I can’t find a way to stub arguments like that? Is this
possible with RSpec?

2

On May 15, 2010, at 2:56 AM, rhydiant wrote:

   # ... do some other stuff
 end

end

ProductFileHandler.persist will add any errors it encounters to the
errors array I pass in. In my test of upload, I want to stub that
error array with different values. After much googling and RSpec doc
searching I can’t find a way to stub arguments like that? Is this
possible with RSpec?

Assuming your goal is to test the different branches of the “if
errors.blank?” conditional, you could do something like this:

ProductFileHandler.stub(:persist) do |,,errors|

add stuff to errors here

return a reasonable value for product_file_name here

end

When the ProductFileHandler class receives the persist message, it will
now invoke this block with the three arguments it receives (user,
product_data, errors). Make sense?

This is pretty invasive but, given the current design, probably the
simplest way to go. If you want something less invasive, you probably
need to change the design.

HTH,
David

3

Thanks for the reply David, works a treat. I’ll probably end up
refacting away from that design but right now that’s exactly what I
need.

Regards

Rhydian